Tag Archives: fritkot

Thursday 14th March 2019 – HERE I AM …

… back in a little room in my hostel place here in Leuven. All settled down nicely and ready for bed even though it’s only 20:30. I’ve had a very busy day today.

With having had a reasonable day yesterday and a reasonably early night, I was awake again at about 04:30. However I must have wandered off back to sleep at some point because the alarms awoke me at 06:00.

I’d managed to go off on a voyage during the night too. I was driving a coach taking the nurses to and from the nurses’ home to the various hospitals in the Crewe area (just like I used to do with the taxis). There was one particular nurse on a particular run that I was told
finished an hour earlier than the others so she needed picking up
separately. And so I started to make enquiries. I was examining the route and discovered quite by chance that had I not had my “thinking head” on, I would have missed out a section of the route and missed a couple of nurses. But I was still at school and still in my school uniform and this girl, someone out of my class, came over to me and asked about the nurses’ bus. It turned out that she was the nurse concerned. In fact she finished at 13:30 and at the old cottage hospital at the back of the school so I could pick her up in my lunch break. When she found out that I was to drive the coach, school uniform and all, she looked at me with total surprise. But nevertheless she agreed to wait in the main hospital building (the “house”) for me to pick her up.

Just for a change, I was out of bed quite smartly, long before the third alarm went off. First task was to make my butties, and then to do the washing up.

The rubbish went outside too and then I came back to finish off the packing and to tidy up.

I’d finished much earlier than anticipated too so I could have a look at events around the world before I set out. And there’s the usual chaos in the UK too as they flounder around helplessly in the mire of their own making, the laughing stock of the whole of the world.

Braving the wind and the rain I headed off to the station. And there was a long wait for the train because I was early. So I treated myself to a very rare coffee.

Plenty of time to read the notices too. And it looks as if there’s a project to electrify the railway line and put high-speed trains on the line, cutting up to 30 minutes off the journey time to Paris.

And as well as that, there’s talk of restarting the railway service to St Malo, and that will be exciting too.

We only had a six-carriage train this morning so we were all hemmed in like sardines. But at least the voyage was uneventful and we were just three minutes late arriving at Vaugirard.

All of the excitement was reserved for the metro at Montparnasse. There was an abandoned suitcase in the long passageway down to Metro line 4 so we couldn’t travel that way.

At a quick glance (and I could maybe have done better with more time) the best way seemed to be Line 6 to Etoile and then Line 2 to La Chapelle, right past the Eiffel Tower.

There was far less walking at the Montparnasse end, but so much more at the other end. And with the longer journey time, it took me just about 55 minutes for the journey. Luckily there was plenty of time.

While I was waiting for my train to be called I ate my butties, and then joined the queue.

It’s one of the old Reseau 38000 PBA trainsets, number 4534, and we’ve travelled on this one before – and quite often too. It seems to be regularly rostered onto this journey.

The train was crowded too. I had the misfortune to have some kind of group of people in my carriage and they took ages to sort themselves out.

But that journey was pretty much uneventful and on time too – plenty of time to catch the 15:56 to Leuven.

I’m glad that I had purchased my rail ticket on line before I came because it’s much less stressful than rushing around trying to do it at the last minute.

Up the road to my little accommodation. There’s a nice room here for me, so I had a relax for a while and then went out to Delhaize for the shopping for breakfast tomorrow.

And much to my surprise I was feeling quite sprightly too – not like I have been feeling for a while

On the way back I sorted out some chips from the fritkot down the hill and then fight my way into the tin of beans because there’s no tin opener here.

Mango sorbet and pineapple for pudding, and now even though it’s only 20:30 I’m off to bed.

It’s all very well feeling sprightly, but it wears me out in the end.

Sunday 23rd December 2018 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER .

… thing crossed off my list of things to do.

Back in the early 1970s when I first started coming over to Oostende, I was always puzzled by the train that was waiting at the station for the passengers. Its destination was always Welkenraedt and I didn’t have a clue where Welkenraedt was.

A little later I had a look for where Welkenraedt might be. It’s a small town nestled in the Ardennes miles from anywhere.

That puzzled me even more as to why the boat trains from Oostende would be going there.
I eventually found the reason. It’s a junction station where lines from Spa and from Eupen come in.

But more importantly, it’s the last station of any importance before the German border. The electricity current in Germany used to be different to that in Belgium, so that was where the Belgian engine came off, and then a German locomotive would be attached to take the train on into Europe.

Alison and I went to Welkenraedt on one of our excursions out back in July to see what was going on. But it was always my ambition, strange though it might seem, to change trains there.

So here I am, on a windswept, soaking wet freezing platform huddled under a tiny shelter at Welkenraedt in the middle of winter waiting for a train to come in.

And no coffee for miles around either

Despite it being Sunday I’d left the alarm connected and at 06:00 it duly rang. No breakfast, no medication, just packing my backpack and then out into the dark, stopping off on the way to take a few photos of around the station area because I had plenty of time..

At 07:24 the train to Eupen came into the station and I leapt aboard. And at Welkenraedt I hopped out. These days the trains don’t go on into Europe but go round to Eupen.

We had to wait for a diesel multiple-unit to come rattling in from Spa.

We didn’t have long to wait until this filthy, dirty disreputable ancient thing came staggering into the station.

Old, covered in grafitti and all kinds of things, and the train was even worse. I’d be ashamed to be seen in something like this, and the idea that the SNCB would be content to send such a machine into a foreign country where it could be compared with the pristine stuff on offer over there is an absurdity to say the least.

But here it was and here I was. So I climbed aboard and rattled off into Germany.

Here I am finally in Germany, in Aachen in fact, at the Hauptbahnhof.

I have to change trains here, and there’s a wait of about 20 minutes for my connection, so there is plenty of time for breakfast.

German bread is probably the best in the world and so a couple of bread rolls of different varieties and a coffee were just what the doctor ordered.

My next train was already in the station. A newish double-decker that put the SNCB offering to shame. This rolled off out of the station, 10 seconds late, and an hour later, I was in Koln.

That was where I took this photograph, by the way.

Interestingly, the announcements on the train were in German followed by English. I imagined what might be the response from the xenophobic racist Brexiters if this kind of cosmopolitanism were ever to happen in the UK.

It’s years since I’ve been to Koln. About 2007 if my memory serves me correctly.

Looking for something to do to pass the time, I’d been idly scanning through the SNCB website and I found that a voyage by train from Leuven to Köln and return would cost me a mere €68:00 – that’s a four-hundred kilometre round trip.

With nothing much happening in Belgium, I decided to come for a day out.

I spent a couple of hours wandering around the city, visiting all of the places that I had visited on my previous trips. But at midday I had to return to the cathedral.

When I was chair of the North European Regional Forum of Open University students, one of the committee members lived here in Koln. And by coincidence she was a big friend of my old friend Liz. Hence the regular visits to Koln. Jackie and I hadn’t seen each other since those days, but she had heard that I was coming to Koln and we were going to meet for lunch.

It was at that moment that the heavens opened. As I picked my way through the crowds I was becoming wetter and wetter, and so I was glad to meet Jackie and go for a coffee.

When the rain eased off a little we headed off into the town and an Italian restaurant. It was a strange place for an Italian restaurant. They wouldn’t do me a plate of vegetables with pasta and tomato sauce. I got the pasta and the tomato sauce, but they couldn’t do the vegetables. That can only mean one thing, as I’m sure that the more astute readers will realise.

By now the rain was coming down even worse, but we headed off regardless. Down the main shopping street and through a couple of the Christmas markets, looking at the products on sale.

We ended up at a hot drinks stall. Jackie had a gluhwein and I had a hot cocktail. The mugs were beautiful so we forewent the deposit and I took them away in my backpack.

Jackie’s partner came down to meet us. They were off to a carol concert at the end of the afternoon so I said goodbye

Now on my own, I retraced my steps back through the markets and down to the River Rhine, thinking that I could have done with a good Rhinecoat.

I walked up along the side of the river and then up the steps to the Hohenzollern Bridge – the huge railway bridge with a pedestrian footpath that straddles the river.

It was a dismal dreary walk in the dark and the rain but even so, it’s good to stand there in mid-stream and watch the fleets of barges and cruise ships passing by underneath.

Eventually I found myself back at the railway station. And to my dismay, the rear of the station has all been cleared up and modernised and the excellent fritkot that I remembered from the past has been swept away.

Nevertheless I did manage to fit myself up with some food. Back inside the station, I found a Thai restaurant in the subterranean shopping gallery that had a range of vegetarian and vegan food.

I had a stir-fry tofu with rice and it was really good.

My train was a few minutes early and already in the platform. To my surprise it was pulled by the same locomotive that had brought me out.

I hopped aboard and grabbed myself a comfortable seat. And here I had an interesting encounter with a German ticket-collector. It had been so wet that the damp atmosphere had caused the ink on my rail ticket to run and he couldn’t read it.

In the end, reason prevailed.

Another wait at Aachen for an even more disreputable Belgian multiple-unit. And which, surprisingly (or maybe not) it was likewise the same one that had brought me out.

There was graffiti all over the inside of the train and rubbish strewn all over the floor. Not a very good advert for the SNCB, sending atrain like this across the border into foreign parts.

And then another wait on the cold and wet at Welkenraedt for my train back to Leuven.

So now, I’m back home, looking and feeling like one more haggard, drowned rat, although I had no idea where I would find one more haggard drowned rat at this time of night.

And straight off to bed because I have the hospital in the morning and I need to be on form.

On my travels today, I took well over 100 photos. Some are in the text and some more below.

But if you want to see the rest, I’ve prepared a web page where you can see them in all their sodding and dripping glory, such as it was.

christmas lights tiensevest leuven louvain belgium

martelarenplein leuven louvain belgium

railway station war memorial martelarenplein leuven louvain belgium

war memorial railway station martelarenplein leuven louvain belgium

war memorial martelarenplein leuven louvain belgium

railway station martelarenplein leuven louvain belgium

train station leuven louvain belgium

hauptbahnhof aachen germany

automotrice sncb 644 653 hauptbahnhof aachen germany

Friday 12th October 2018 – WHAT WITH ONE …

… thing and another (and until you get started you’ve no idea just how many other things there are) It wasn’t far short of 03:00 when I finally settled down to sleep.

That’s not leaving me too much time when there’s an alarm to go off at 06:00 is it?

Mind you, there was plenty of time to go off and disappear on another nocturnal ramble. This time it was to do with a load of girls who were saying goodbye to each other and going their separate ways. And I still haven’t worked out what that was all about either.

No-one was really hungry this morning so we didn’t have much in the way of breakfast. But I had a shower and then we put the washing machine on the go. I’ve no idea where all of this washing comes from – it’s certainly not me.

Once we’d gathered our wits, which in my case takes much longer than it ought, we went for a walk in the wind.

Granville was formerly the home of the well-known fasion designer Christian Dior.

His childhood home, situated on the cliffs on the way out of town, has been converted into a museum of his life and works, and it’s the kind of place that most women would like to visit.

and so this was our destination for this morning.

We went out along the walls of the old town and then down the steps onto the Plat Gousset.

Our attention was caught by a bicycle propped up against the wall with someone’s clothes draped over it.

So looking out to sea we saw someone perched up on the diving platform. And you can see how far in the tide is today by the fact that the platform is practically submerged.

And as we watched, our intrepid hero, clearly the grandson of Captain Matthew Webb, took to the windy water and started to swim back to the shore, cheered on by the onlookers.

As I remarked to one of the spectators, “he’s a braver man than I am” because I wouldn’t have liked to have been out there in those conditions.

It took him a while to make it back to shore though, although he never looked as if he was in any trouble.

However, we did have an interruption by some people who seemed to be rather concerned about what was going on.

Round the headland came the sea-rescue boat and it can’t have been a coincidence that they came on the scene just at that particular moment.

Of course, their services weren’t required at all but they were there nevertheless to keep an eye on the proceedings. Unless it REALLY was a coincidence.

It was a beautiful day for photography though. The colours really were superb and the excellent light brought them out perfectly.

I must have taken dozens of photos down there and it’s very hard to choose which one was the best of the bunch.

So I’ll just post one photo here and you can imagine all of the rest.

To reach the museum you have to climb up a couple of flights of steep stairs at the end of the promenade, but it’s well worth it, particularly on a day like this as the views from the top are stunning.

I was taking a few photos of the Ile de Chausey when I noticed a strange shape at the back of one of the islands of the archipelago.

So I photographed it with the view of cropping it and enlarging it back at home to see what it was.

But there was no need to do that really because I could see that it was a moving object. And just a minute or two later it burst out into the open sea.

Yes, we have another cruise ship cruising around the Chennel Islands. Not a particularly big one by the look of things, but interesting nevertheless.

I’ve not been able to find out which one it was either which is a shame.

That wasn’t the only maritime activity either.

As we were walking along the Plat Gousset we had heard a hooter telling us that a ship was leaving port. And 20 minutes later our old friend Normandy Trader hove into view.

She mad a really good photograph as she steamed … “dieseled” – ed … off to Jersey with the Ile de Chausey in the background.

The grounds of the museum are really beautiful and you can see why the Diors chose this place to be their home with views like this all over the place.

When they moved here in 1905 or whenever it was, there was nothing but bare rock but Mrs Dior arranged for tons of soil to be brought to the premises and this was transformed into what we see today.

The young Christian Dior has aspirations to be an architect, and it is said that some of the features of the garden and some of the furniture were made to his own designs.

But beautiful as the place might be, it came into the hands of the Granville town council who are now responsible for the upkeep, and the place seems to be suffering under the budget cuts while public funds are stashed away to satisfy what many people consider to be Madame la Maire‘s somewhat “over-ambitious” plans to abandon the town’s heritage and transform it into a playground for the rich.

So abandoning our fears about whether the railway line will be torn up and the only way to arrive at the town will be by luxury yacht with crew of 25, we carried on our tour of the garden.

Granville has been dubbed by many people (especially Madame la Maire as “The Monaco of the North” and it’s true that mediterranean trees, palm trees, and even banana trees will grow here.

As I reassured Josée though, they aren’t native to the area but if they are planted and well-maintained, they will survive.

The interior of the building was quite beautiful too and Josée spent quite a while admiring the dresses and the perfumes.

My attention was caught by the collection of miniature dresses on show because you didn’t just buy a Dior dress for yourself and your daughter, you could even buy one for your daughter’s dolly and hat surely is the height of decadence.

On the way out of the building Josée stopped to sample some perfumes and another woman went to spray me with stuff thinking that I was her husband.

With not having had much breakfast, by now we were quite hungry where we made our way into town and the fritkot for lunch. And he was open too, not like Saturday night.

Josée had a plate of meat and salad while I had some chips and a veggie wrap. And it was all quite delicious too.

Back here, I had a little … errr … relax, and then we set off again.

At the Christian Dior museum they had told us that our tickets give us the right to a reduction in the admission fee to the Anacréon Museum of Modern Art down the road from me.

Modern Art isn’t my thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, but Josée is quite into it and I have to keep my visitors happy. There wasn’t much in there that I would have liked to grace the walls of my apartment.

But Josée explained to me that I was understanding art incorrectly. If I simply want something to hang on a wall to look pretty then art isn’t for me. The purpose of art appreciation is to study and admire the artist’s technique.

So perhaps then art isn’t for me after all.

We stopped off for a drink on the way back and then went round for a long chat with Yves and Lily. They had a lot to say for themselves which is quite nice, but they also advised Josée against going musseling on the beach. Apparently there’s a virus going round and it’s not doing the shellfish any good at all.

Tea was some buckwheat crèpes with all kinds of stuff on (I had vegan cheese, onions, tomato, mushroom and garlic on mine) and to finish the day we saw the end of Seducing Doctor Lewis.

And after all of that, I’m exhausted.

casino plat gousset granville manche normandy france

casino plat gousset walled town granville manche normandy france

rocks headland plat gousset granville manche normandy france

bathing huts plat gousset granville manche normandy france

lighthouse rocks ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

waves breaking on rocks ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

lighthouse rocks ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

normandy trader ile de chausey granville manche normandy france

cemetery donville les bains granville manche normandy france

garden shed muséé christian dior museum granville manche normandy france

musee christian dior museum granville manche normandy france

rue de la falaise granville manche normandy france

Wednesday 9th May 2018 – AND SO DESPITE …

… all of the racket going on around me last night I must have gone to sleep at some point because I remember being awoken by the alarm at 06:20.

And not only that- I’d been on my travels during the night too. I’d been in a car accident and was filling out a form to claim my losses from the other driver. I wasn’t sure about something so I went to seek advice from a qualified person (I can’t remember now who it was but I have a feeling that it was someone connected to the defendant). She told me that on no account must I fill in this form. This form related to actual, tangible losses only and if I were to submit it, I would be nullifying any claim to abstract losses such as compensation for the pain and suffering and the inconvenience etc.

Funnily enough, when I awoke this morning, a friend of mine came on line to talk about the issues that she was having with regard to the sequel to a car accident that she had had a couple of months ago. Small world, isn’t it?

We had the usual morning pantomime and then I leapt under the shower for 5 minutes. A quick scrub does me the world of good.

There were a few things to do around here and then I headed off for the hospital. It was grey and misty when I set out but I hadn’t been out long before the sun broke through. And by the time that I arrived at Castle Anthrax I was half-undressed and sweating like a horse.

But I did stop off along the way in the Brusselsestraat to take a photograph. And you might have to look at this for a while before you work out what’s wrong with it.

It’s the kind of thing that you only ever find in Belgium

10:50 was my appointment, and at 10:50 I was already being seen to. My monolingual nurse again so we did it all in Flemish and that cheered me up no end (although it would have cheered me up even more if Doctor Piglet and Doctor Winston had been there to practise their art.

Once I’d been all wired up and plugged in (and I’ve lost another kg which has surprised me considering everything that I ate in North Africa) I was stuck in a chair and left to get on with it.

Eventually the doctor came round to see me. While my protein count continues to be really depressing (and even more so) there’s some good news on the blood count front. Last month it was 9.0. This month it’s 9.4.

They are quite happy with that, so it seems – to such an extent that they fixed up the final three appointments. 7th June, 5th July and 2nd August. That means that a trip that I have planned for the end of June may well come to pass, and also that an early trip to Canada might possibly be on the cards.

But I’ll need to find out what their plans are after August. If it’s a 2-month visit I shall be laughing. Even more so if it’s a three-month visit.

Once they kicked me out I walked on back into town and did a little shopping in the Delhaize and the Loving Hut, picked up an ice-cream sorbet to celebrate, and then came back here where i … errr … relaxed for a while.

Having … errr … relaxed at the hospital I reckoned that I might have got away with it, but it’s obviously the heat.

later on I went to the fritkot on the railway bridge. And when I say ‘no tomato sauce on the veggie burger” I really do mean “no tomato sauce on the veggie burger”. Bar-steward!

A little walk around a couple of the back streets afterwards because I don’t really know the area behind the railway station.

But never mind that for a moment. My attention was drawn to this car that was parked up here. I’ve no idea what it is and there was no maker’s badge or anything to identify it. I thought at first that it might be a Subaru, but that’s not a Subaru emblem on the grille.

But whatever it is, its number plate tells me that it’s quite modern.

Arriving back here, I was attacked by the hotel cat yet again.

Bed-time now. An early night. A long day ahead of me tomorrow as I return to the Land of thr Undead.

Sunday 15th April 2018 – I’M MOVING ON …

…this morning so I can’t afford to hang about. I have a lot to do.

Not like during the night anyway. For some reason or other I had a desire to learn English – more really for the precise terms of grammar than anything else. And so I enrolled on this course that was taking place in Flint in North Wales. So I entered the class where the teacher greeted me in fluent Welsh. Whatever the standard of my Welsh might be, it wasn’t good enough to understand anything at the speed that she was speaking and this took me completely unawares. I stepped back for a minute to wonder how I was going to cope with this. In the class was a girl from Finland – tallish and well-built with shoulder-length blonde hair in a pony tail, and we ended up in a bar having a drink and a chat about our experiences in this class.

I leapt out of bed with alacrity (and I bet that you thought that I was on my own, didn’t you?) and while I was waiting for my medicine to work I caught up with a few bits and pieces that needed doing and that I should have done yesterday had I not been so exhausted after our trip out.

After breakfast I started to hunt things down and do my packing but for some reason or other it took far longer than I expected and I ended up stuffing things at random into my suitcase – and then unstuffing them as I searched for things that I needed and that I couldn’t remember having stuffed into the aforesaid. I’m clearly in a bad way.

And my suitcase seems to weigh about 10 times more than it did coming here. I haven’t bought that much extra stuff – I know that – and a lot of the stuff that I brought, like the food for example, has been vastly diminished in quantity. And the towels in the hotel weren’t all that fluffy.

Dashing out, I handed back the key to the room and was delayed for a few minutes by the local cat who finally allowed me to pick him up and stroke him. Stroking a cat is of course very good for the stress, but not if you are in a hurry to catch a train.

At the station I had to queue for hours behind people who clearly had nothing better to do on a Sunday morning (I’ve no idea why my new bank card won’t work in the self-service ticket machines of the SNCB).

I was only just in time for my train. Had it not been running 5 minutes late I would have been in difficulty.

It was one of the first generation of the “luxury” second-class trains – the first of those from the late 1980s with comfortable individual cloth seats. And so it was a little on the tatty side with frayed edges and so on but nevertheless, very comfortable.

I settled myself in for the long haul up to Oostende. I’m treating myself to a couple of days by the seaside before I come home.

We pulled into the station at Brugge and after a while I noticed that we hadn’t pulled out again. I didn’t think much of it until I was tapped on the shoulder by the ticket collector.

It seems that there’s a problem on the line higher up and the train won’t be going any further. A bus had been provided for us.

Eventually tracking down where I was supposed to go, I joined the heaving throng crammed like sardines into an old De Lijn service bus that whisked us up the motorway at 49mph. And was I happy when the doors opened and we could all alight?

The beautiful summer’s day that we had had in Leuven had now descended into a grey overcast sky but it will take much more than this to dampen my ardour. I set off to find my hotel, stopping on the way to pick up a baguette and being given the change from a €20 note in €2 pieces because they had nothing else to hand.

As for the hotel, I had a very good price from the Hotel Neutralia – a hotel that I don’t actually know. It’s wrong to say that it’s spartan – probably “basic” is a much better word to describe it – but I’ve stayed in many worse hotels than this and paid much more money for the privilege.

The staff are very friendly and hospitable, but the downside is that the internet doesn’t reach into the bedrooms on the upper floors (like mine). You have to come down to the foyer or the bar.

With the baguette that I had bought and a few other bits and pieces that I had, I made some butties and then headed out to the beach.

Just in time to encounter a Ship of the Day – and it’s been a long time since we’ve had one of those, hasn’t it? So I scrambled across the beach onto the sea wall over there for a closer look.

She came into the harbour, did a quick lap around and promptly sailed … "dieseled" – ed … back out again.

She’s the Artevelde out of Antwerp, and is described as an offshore, tug, supply or dredging vessel, which would suggest to me that she has some connection with the offshore wind farm that we know is out there somewhere.

Despite flying the Belgian flag and being based in Antwerp she’s owned by a company called Dredging International Luxembourg.

That reminds me that last time we were here we saw in the harbour quite a few other Luxembourg ships that looked as if they had connections with the wind farm.

Built as recently as 2009, she has a gross tonnage of 5005 and so is rather big as far as a coastal vessel goes.

I walked on down to the railway station to check on the time of my train back to Brussels, passing by the fishmarket on the way.

I’m not sure now if I’ve ever taken a photo of it in the past, but here’s one to be going on with. I’ve probably mentioned that each stall is occupied by an individual trawler skipper, and the goods displayed on the slab came out of his trawler’s hold earlier in the morning.

You don’t get much fresher than that without having to go out to sea to catch it for yourself.

Outside the fish market is a pile of temporary stalls that specialise in certain seafoods.

As well as the warme wullocks that we saw on a previous occasion you can have your mosselen in case you want to make your own mosselen en fritjes, and if you aren’t careful you can get crabs too.

One of the stallholders offered me oysters. “They are a well-known aphrodisiac” he assured me.

But regular readers of this rubbish will know that that is nonsense. I had a dozen the last time that I was in the UK with Percy Penguin (who doesn’t feature in these pages half as much as she deserves) but only 9 of them worked.

I’ve never noticed this war memorial before and I can’t believe that I’ve missed it in all the times that I’ve been coming to Oostende since the early 1970s.

It’s been erected to commemorate 25 sailors of the 29th Motor Torpedo Boat Flotilla who lost their lives when an accidental fire ignited explosives aboard one of the boats and blew a total of five boats into oblivion.

Either it’s fairly new or else I’ve been walking around Oostende in a daze.

It’s not possible to miss this though, is it?

This is the Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk – the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul – in Oostende, designed by the architect Louis Delacenserie and said to be based on the cathedral at Cologne.

Despite its ancient, Gothic looks, construction of the church began in 1896 to replace an earlier one on the site that had burnt down. It was consecrated on 31st August 1908

And it wasn’t missed in either of the World Wars, suffering some damage in both. As a result, the magnificent stained glass windows in there are much more modern than the rest of the church.

And one day I’ll be walking past here with a camera when the sun is actually shining.

So down at the station. And I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I am not looking forward to a train that starts out at 06:41. Whatever time will I have to be out of bed to catch that? But at least there is a train. I could have ended up at somewhere much more isolated than this.

My perambulations took me around the yacht harbour and here there were many interesting things to see.

We had the Mercator of course. She’s the centre of attraction here in Oostende in the same way that Marité is back home in Granville although she doesn’t move about quite so often.

She was designed by Adrien de Gerlache, the Belgian Antarctic explorer and author, and rigged as a barquentine.

She was built in Leith, Scotland in 1932 as a training ship for the Belgian Merchant Navy and made many successful and well-known voyages, but was impressed into the British Royal Navy in World War II as a depot ship for submarines.

It took four years for her to return to service after her demobilisation and she needed an extensive overhaul before she was considered fit enough to resume her training duties.

From 1960 she was moored “off-duty” first at Antwerp and later here in Oostende as a part-time museum. She was laid up permanently in 2013.

But never mind the Mercator for the moment. This yacht caught my eye too.

And not for the least of the reasons being that she seems to be out of Dover – not the Dover just across the English Channel but the “Dover DL” which seems to indicate the Dover that is in Delaware, across the Atlantic from here.

So what she is doing here I really have no idea. But judging by the moss and the general debris scattered about on her, she’s been here for quite a while and won’t be sailing back home any time soon.

Back on the promenade and they seem to be digging it up everywhere. and how!

With it being a Sunday there’s no-one around to ask what is going on but part of the promenade had an underground car-park, so maybe they are planning to extend that. Parking here in Oostende is very tight in the summer and with all of the alterations that seem to be going on here, there will be fewer and fewer spaces. And so a few more certainly won’t go amiss.

But then, of course, parking is expensive here. And I paid just €21:00 to come here on the train. so I’m not sure why people coming to the seaside to lounge on the beach need to come by car anyway.

Back at my hotel I had a … errr … little rest for an hour or so and then went back out onto the streets – well, the Zeedyke actually – and headed west along the promenade, grabbing a bag of fritjes from the fritkot on the corner here.

Quite a walk too – much further than I was expecting in fact. but I did go past a couple of vehicles belonging to one of my former employers. The happy (and not-so-happy) times that I had there between 1979 and 1992 with the taxi business in between and around of course.

But how times have changed. When I started there in 1979 we had Ford R1114 lightweight coaches with Plaxton Supreme bodywork. But just look today at the kind of vehicle that is being used on coach tours. Mercedes engined three-axle heavyweights.

I don’t know how people today would have managed with some of the trips that we had to do back in 1979 in the equipment that we had.

Eventually I arrived at my destination – the Versluys Arena, home of the Koninklijke VoetballKlub Oostende.

Having missed my football last night, I wasn’t going to miss another and this evening KV Oostende were at home against STVV – the Kononklijke Sint Truidense Voetballvereniging.

I don’t recall having seen either of these teams before and I’ve certainly never been to the Versluys Arena so that sounded like a good plan.

I was crammed into the “away” end with the St Truiden supporters one of whom was dressed as a Canary. It’s the nickname of the club aparently, due no doubt to the yellow and blue colours that the team wears.

The match itself was very interesting. STVV had much more of the possession in the first half but they didn’t have the technique that Oostende had. KV Oostende were certainly the better team.

The trouble with modern football is that the aim seems to be “possession” – the longer they can hang on to the ball the better. And just like every other match that I have seen, the quick ball out wide to the wingers just doesn’t seem to be an option. They seem much more willing to pass the ball back to the goalkeeper.

At half-time though, KV Oostende were 2-0 up. And just to prove my point, both goals were scored by passes “over the top” of the defenders to players running into space.

During half-time the heavens opened and we were treated to the torrential downpour to end all torrential downpours. And the second half was played in conditions into which you wouldn’t have sent out a dog.

To everyone’s surprise (the STVV supporters and probably the players too) STVV pulled a goal back. A shot from about 20 yards out took a wicked deflection off a defender and ended up in the far corner of the net with the keeper helpless to do anything about that one.

And then, with 5 minutes to go, STVV scored a most unlikely equaliser with some good passing play where a ball broke kindly foran unmarked attacker.

And in the remaining time, STVV had two excellent chances to score a winner but their attackers were unable to make any contact with the ball.

By now the rain had eased off a little and I set off on my wet and weary walk home along the promenade.

I didn’t get very far though before my attention was grabbed by this gorgeous machine.

It’s a Mercedes 220 Ponton – the Ponton being the first modern post-war body styling from Mercedes and which ran from about 1953 to the early 1960s before being replaced by the W series models (somewhere down on the farm growing in a hedgerow I have a Mercedes W123 240D).

Not exactly my favourite Mercedes – I adore the pre-war and early postwar models of course but I would settle any day of the week for one of these and I’d be glad to take this home with me in my suitcase.

My long and tiring walk home brought me past the Royal Villa of King Leopold II. He was probably the most famous King of the Belgians (the King isn’t “The King of Belgium” but “The King of the Belgians”) and under whose rule there was an opulence that has never been matched either before or since.

And he had his Royal Villa, or Summer Palace, behind that wall on the Promenade at Oostende.

I slunk into my hotel and gave myself a really good shake so as not to traipse the rain with me into the hotel. I had intended to watch a film before going to sleep but with my fitbit telling me that I had done 227% of my day’s activity and walked a total of … errr … 17.7 kms today, I decided that an early night would be a better idea.

Saturday 31st March 2018 – YOU MISSED …

… an exciting football match this evening.

US Granville were playing CS Villedieu – a team one Division below them – in the Normandy Cup, and ran out 5-1 winners.

You might think that this indicates that CS Villedieu were on the receiving end of a right spannering, but nothing could be further from the truth. The scoreline is extremely unfair to them.

The game hinged on a two-minute spell after about an hour. Up until then the teams had been very evenly matched and although Granville were 1-0 up thanks to a goal after about 15 minutes, the lead was by no means whatever a comfortable one.

But then CS Villedieu broke away upfield with some nice play and had a shot on goal that beat absolutely everyone, including the US Granville keeper, but flashed about half a millimetre wide of the post. Had they scored, it would have been no more than they deserved.

However, from the goal-kick, Granville roared upfield and won a corner. And the Granville centre-forward had a free header into the net.

From the restart, the US Granville midfielder intercepted the ball, played it upfield and with some neat passing play from the forwards, the n°10 (I think) found himself in a one-on-one with the Villedieu keeper and made no mistake.

So within 60 seconds of what should have been 1-1, CS Villedieu found themselves 3-0 down.

After that, things went from bad to worse for Villedieu. They were still playing some nice football and even pulled back a goal, but every time Granville had the ball up front they looked dangerous. As well as 2 more goals, we had two point-blank saves from the keeper and a resounding, thunderous volley that came back off the foot of the post.

5-1 it was. 2-1 would have been a fairer result but it could so easily have been 7 or 8 for Granville.

And I’ll tell you something else that I missed too. And I’m as malade as a perroquet about it, as they say around here.

There’s been a dash-cam in Caliburn for several years and it’s never ever recorded anything interesting. And yet today, there we were at the roundabout near LeClerc and a motorist a few cars in front of me stops to give way. A tourist behind (yes, it’s grockle-time again), too busy admiring a seagull, runs slap bang into the rear of him. Ad here I am with the dash-cam running!

Or, at least, I thought I was. But it turns out that the SD card filled up about 100 yards beforehand and so had switched off. How upset am I?

With having had a late night last night I didn’t have much sleep . And although I’d been on my travels, all memory of it disappeared in the time that it took to reach for the dictaphone.

We had the usual morning ritual followed by a shower and a general clean-up, and then it was shopping-time.

LIDL and NOZ came up with nothing much of any excitement, and I went to Mr Bricolage for some PTFE lubricant for the machine heads of the bass guitar.

We then had the accident, and as I was pulling onto the car park at LeClerc, I almost collided with Liz and Terry coming in the opposite direction. So we went for a coffee, that passed into lunch, and I’m very grateful to Terry for hosting me.

Nothing much of any excitement in there either, but I do now have an office chair (even though I don’t have an office as yet – but I will in early course) and that was quite by accident.

With all of the time that it took for chatting and so on, it was just coming up to 14:00 when I was driving past BUT and they were reopening after lunch. And there was a big sign outside – “Clearance Sale – Massive reductions – Free Installation on Fitted Kitchens”.

So I went in to see about a kitchen for here because I hate what I have and I want something much better than this. However, it won’t be happening from BUT. The “free installation” only applies to purchases of over €2500 and I’m looking to spend a tenth of that.

But I had a look at the office chairs and there was one that was quite comfortable and quite robust. Not quite like the one that I had in Brussels that I could (and did on many occasions) curl up and go to sleep in, but it was €79:99 – which is cheap in itself – reduced by 50%! And they had run out of stock so after much discussion they let me have the display one for €36:00. I’ll go for that.

This evening I had a brisk walk out to the Cité des Sports in the rain and howling gale for the football and because I’d brought a flask, the Hall and bar were open. Isn’t that typical?

And on the way back I grabbed a portion of chips for tea. It’s good to catch up with old habits.

Tomorrow is of course a Bank Holiday and a Sunday, so I’m going for two lie-ins.

And why not?

Friday 16th February 2018 – MY NEIGHBOURS …

… are getting on my wick.

I dunno what they are doing in their room but involves noise – noise that goes on until 04:00 in the morning.

It’s not as if it’s a very loud noise but the walls are paper-thin here and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m a very light sleeper.

And so with my noisy neighbours next door, I had no qualms whatever about my very noisy alarm going off at 06:20 this morning. Or the noisy repeat at 06:30.

But despite everything I was off on my travels during the night.In a shed where a group of young kids had barricaded themselves in to protect themselves against some kind of monster. But they had left their pony outside in its stable in the field and someone was wondering if they should protect that too. But another kid piped up that if you spread out your forces too thinly to try to protect everything you end up protecting nothing. So they didn’t. And the monster’s attack on this shed was very half-hearted and the pony was unscathed.
A little later, these kids were looking for their black kitten that had escaped. The search involved wading up to their knees in some very muddy water much to the amusement of some nearby workmen, and this became even more amusing when one of the kids had made it into the water and the kitten was spotted running across the top of a brick wall nearby.

After breakfast and the usual pause to let the medication do its stuff (yes, I obtained another prescription when I was at the hospital) I went off to the railway station.

There was an Intercity to Brussels that was running late, and it pulled into the station just as I arrived so I leapt on board and settled down in a comfortable corner with my book.

And as a result of the late arrival of the train, I for one arrived in Brussels at the Gare Central before time, which is always very nice.

The metro was quite painless too – took me all the way to Merode in minutes.

Consequently I was early at my health insurance people, even though we had another distraction.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have a thing about “parking”, and there are no finer examples of bad parking to be had than in Brussels.

Here we have a delivery van stopped to unload a couple of parcels and so he’s blocking the street as he double-parks.

But hed he not been so lazy, he could have advanced not even 10 metres and parked his van for two minutes in front of the dark blue Peugeot.

But obviously walking that extra 10 metres is far too difficult for the poor dear.

So back to the plot.

I presented myself at the reception.
“You’ll have to wait – it’s not 09:30 yet”
“But …”
“You’ll have to wait”.
And so I waited
At 09:29 “it’ll be open in a minute. Can you show me your badge?”
“I don’t have a badge – I’m a foreign visitor”
“Then you’ll need to go to reception to fill in a form”.
“I know. That’s what I was trying to do when you stopped me”

Eventually I was allowed in and, to be frank, I needn’t have bothered. When I’ve been there before, they’ve been most kind and considerate in that office.

But not today. I dunno what’s the matter with them but they just seemed to be more keen to see the back of me. I didn’t accomplish half of the things that I intended to do.

But instead, I went for awalk across the park and down to the Rond-Point Schuman. It was a beautiful morning.

The park is the Parc de la Cinquantenaire – the 50th Anniversary Park, and was established by King Leopold II in 1880 (although the huge arch wasn’t built until 1905) on the site of a military parade ground for the nearby barracks, to host an exhibition to celebrate 50 years of Belgian independence.

Several subsequent exhibitions were held here until the new site out by the Atomium was developed.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have mentioned parrots in Belgium before.

There was an aviary in the city that was bombed during the war and all of the exotic birds escaped. Surprisingly, many of them survived the cold winters and went on to establish breeding colonies in the wild.

There are considerable flocks of these exotic birds all over the city these days, and here are two of the aforementioned sitting in a tree in the park. It’s hard to believe that this is a city in north-west Europe with a continental climate.

At the bank I picked up two of my cards (for some reason the third hadn’t been prepared and I’ll have to go back) and even more surprisingly, they work. That’s all of my financial issues resolved right now – for the time being. I can actually access my money now.

Back down on the metro to the Gare Centrale and Malou turned up on time.She’d been out on the Belgian coast for a holiday and was returning to Luxembourg. We’d agreed to meet up for coffee seeing as it’s been years since we last met.

We put the world to rights for a couple of hours and then we both went our separate ways. She on to Luxembourg and me back to Leuven.

There were still a few things that I had wanted to do here in Brussels like visit the railway museum, and this was what I had planned for this afternoon. But having had a bad night, I came home instead.

Via the Vegan shop in Leuven where I picked up some more vegan cheese. I came back here, made myself a cheese and tomato butty or two, and then … errr … relaxed for a while. I’d had a bad night.

18:00 saw me head off to the railway station for my train at 18:36. And because it was departing before 19:00 I had to pay full price and not a weekend saver ticket.

And the train was 20 minutes late coming in and – would you believe – 23 minutes later still in leaving (just missing the 45 minutes-late threshold for compensation) Which meant that I could have bought a weekend saver anyway.

We arrived in Lier 45 minutes late which meant that I had to scramble over the road for my big bag of chips for tea, and then scramble off in a hurry down the road to Het Lisp.

No prizes for guessing why I had come to Lier, of course.

There’s one game in the Belgian Second Division on a Friday night every week, and this week it’s the turn of Lierse SK against KSV Roeselare.

Lier is easily accessible from Leuven even late at night (or early in the morning) so it’s always a good choice of ground to visit.

With KSV Roeselare being the visitors, I was hoping that we might have the Battle of the Cheerleaders.

Both teams have cheerleaders, which is always very good for the morale, but I do have to say that the young ones of Roeselare can knock spots off the home team. Much better organised and much better choreographed.

But no such luck. It was just the Lierse SK cheerleaders here tonight. It’s better than nothing of course.

Cheerleaders we might have, but fans we didn’t seem to.

I’ve been to Lier and the Het Lisp Stadion on several occasions to see the football, but I don’t think that I’ve seen the ground as empty as this.

It’s not quite the “announcing the fan changes to the teams” that you have at Tubize, but it was disappointing all the same. And there wasn’t much in the way of atmosphere to compensate. It was all very subdued.

The supporters weren’t the only thing that was subdued either. The Lierse SK team played like they were half asleep. They had little enthusiasm, little attacking spirit and, so it seemed, little interest.

Strangely enough, Roeselare didn’t seem to be in all that much of an attackign mood either, content to move the ball around ahead of the defence.

It wasn’t until about the 25th minute when they first tried the ball over the top. And a player running in shot, the keeper could only parry it, and a Roeselare attacker followed up.

Roeselare still kept on pouring forward, and much to everyone’s surprise Lierse SK scored against the run of play.

Well into the second hald, the first time they tried one over the top and won a corner. From the corner we had a carbon copy of Roeselare’s goal.

The match still went on at a pedestrian pace from Lierse SK’s point of view and with about 10 minutes to go, Roeselare were awarded a penatly – which was saved.

This had the effect of switching on the current to the Lierse SK side and they started to attack. The final 10 or so minutes of the game were quite exciting.

In stoppage time, Lierse won a series of corners and had two (dubious) appeals for a penalty turned down. And so as you might expect, Roeselare roared upfield and scored the winner with almost the final kick of the game.

I was back on the station just in time to catch the earlier direct train to Leuven, which cheered me up no end. So I was back here before midnight.

But my neighbours are partying again. I think that it’s going to be another long night.

Friday 15th December 2017 – WHAT AN EXCITING …

… football match that was!

OH Leuven were playing SK Lierse, the team at the top of the table. It was a freezing night but everyone who entered the ground was given a Santa hat and a free glass of glühwein (I declined mine) so we were all in the festive spirit.

OHL played the best that I had seen them play for quite some considerable time and were a deserved 2-0 up at half-time. Their left-winger, this guy Storm who they signed from KV Oostende, was tearing them to shreds down the left flank. He didn’t know what to do with the ball when he got to the bye-line but at least he was keeping the SK Lierse defence busy.

But the result was inevitable. He received one kick too many and after 75 minutes he hobbled from the field. A few minutes later OH Leuven were effectively down to 10 men. Casagolda, the centre-forward, had also been the vistil of a few heavy challenges and he received one too many. With no more substitutes, he had to hobble on but was clearly out of the game.

This took the presssure off the Lierse defence and they could push much further forward. They inevitably scored a goal late in the game but Leuven hung on to win.

Last night, I settled down to watch a Boris karloff “Mr Wong” film – and that had the desired effect. Out in 30 seconds. And off to Gresty Road outside the Alexandra Social Club where I was with a couple of people watching this young boy and young girl looking for a place where they could get up to no good. “It’s a shame about there being no tress to hide behind here in the Arctic” said one of the people – and only anyone who has ever stood on the windswept car park between the Social Club and Jail House on the corner will ever understand the connection.

After breakfast I headed up to the bus station for the bus to Everberg and the English shop. I wanted my mince pies and Christmas pudding.

The bus ws jam-packed with kids – I’ve no idea where they were going. Nor had I any real idea where I was going but once I saw somewhere tha I realised, I alighted and walked the rest of the way, only to find that there was a bus stop right outside.

I found what i wanted (no Dandelion and Burdock though – I’ll have to make do with fiery Ginger – but the woman in front of me spent over €170 on things like sliced bread, jams and so on-everything typically British. It rather defeats the point of living abroad if you do that.

On the way back I picked up some bread and tomatoes and made myself a butty with the cheese from yesterday, and that was followed by a little doze.

Later, I headed into town to look at the Christmas lights at this end of town and to visit the Christmas market now that I worked out where it was.

And also down to Hema. I want a very small saucepan for doing sauces and the like and they had one to match another saucepan that i bought from there. €11:00 reduced to €8:80 so I’m very happy with that.

Later on I was off to the football, and found another fritkot across the road from the nick. Their fritjes were excellent and I’ll go there again.

But forst i’m going to bed. I’ve had a very hectic day.

Saturday 18th November 2017 – I WAS WELL …

… away last night.

Although it took a while for me to go off to sleep, once I’d gone I was well-and-truly gone and I remember nothing until the alarm went off.

That’s not quite true though. I’d been on my travels last night too. I started off in a businessand the local workhouse was parcelling off the orphan children into apprenticeships (I’ll have to stop reading these Old Bailey cases from the 1750s). I was allocated a young girl and I wasn’t sure of how I could best employ her to make the most of her apprenticeship.
From here I was with someone – who might even have been Nerina, and we were n an aeroplane. But the pilot, for some reason, lost control and the aeroplane crashed, right on the main road that rus from Brussels out to the Airport. Everyone survived the crash and managed to escape, but even though there was aviation fiel all over the place I had to go back into the aeroplane to rescue Strawberry Moose.

After the usual breakfast and a little relax, I went and had a good shower, a shave and a change of clothes too. And my little halogen heater works quite nicely in the bathroom too. And deciding to make the fullest opportunity of a nice clean me, I changed the bedding too and I’ll have a nice comfortable bed to sleep in tonight. And just as well too, because it’s Sunday and a lie-in.

Once I’d gathered my wits (which doesn’t take long these days) Caliburn and I went to the shops.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that just recently I’ve been walking up to LIDL and back, and so I decided to drive up the way that I came back on foot the other day. And much to my surprise, I was there in half the time without any queues and hold-ups at all. I’ll have to try this way again.

I didn’t spend anything special in there, but I made up for that later.

I called in at GIFI on the way out. It’s winter and with no pie huts at the football matches I’m freezing to death. And so I bought myself a thermos flask so that I could have some coffee to warm me up. And I bought a few other things too – but nothing exciting.

At the biocoop I bought some more vegan sausages and some sunflower seeds for the muesli, And next stop was NOZ. A few bits and pieces there too, including some sea salt. Not necessarily for the salt, but for the jars. They were those nice hexagonal ones that I like.

In the Auchan I didn’t spend anything special yet for some reason that I don’t understand my bill there came to almost €25:00 I’m not sure what I spent it on.

But I did have a laugh as I was leaving. the Beaujolais Nouveau is now arriving in the supermarkets. The story behind the race to the market is that one year the crop was so awful that it didn’t last more than a couple of weeks so there was a rush to gt it to market and sell it before it spoiled on the shelves.

Here at Auchan my favourite beaujolais Nouveau was on offer and I consider its name to be extremely apt.

I couldn’t have called it anything better myself.

By the time I returned home it was 13:30, and by the time I’d unpacked, it was lunchtime.

After lunch I crashed out for a while – I’m clearly not doing very well these days, and then at 16:00 I hit the streets again – but on foot this time.

It took me ages to climb the hill up ast the railway station and I had to stop a couple of times to get my breath. Nevetheless, it was a mere 16:35 wwhenI arrived at the Stade Louis Dior.

Granville’s 2nd XI, in blac, were taking on Agneaux FC, two places above them in Regional Lzague 2.

This was one of the most exciting matches that I have seen for quite some considerable time.

Granville took the lead after just 3 minutes. A ball upfield, the keeper shouting “leave it” and he ran out of his goal to kick it … right into the back of one of his own players

The ball bounced clear, right onto the path of an attacking Granville forward and with the keeper stranded, the attacker had the simplest of chances.

And then the match went in pells. We would have 10 minutes of Granville pressure followed by 10 minutes of Agneaux pressure, and then it would swing round again. Three good (if lucky) saves by the Granville keeper, Granville thumped the Agneaux woodwork twice, but the score didn’t increase.

We did have a minor interruption when there was a major car acident in the street outside.

The two clubs have changed position in the table after this result and that’s good news.

At the final whistle, a brisk walk took me round the corner and down the street to the Sports Centre, where US Granville’s 3rd XI was taling on CO Sourdeval. Granville are third bottom and Co Sourdeval are second from top, so I wasn’t expecting much.

The final result was 3-2 to Sourdeval and the only mystery about this match was how Sourdeval scored only three. Because Granville were pretty poor, clueless and totally disorganised.

Granville’s two goals were a free kick that confused everyone at the back post and a solo run from the halfway line by the centre-forward. But apart from that, they didn’t offer bery much.

I walked back here via the fritkot for a bag of chips, and then went straight to bed. I think that today has taken an awful lot out of me. At least my new flask played dividends.

Saturday 28th October 2017 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN STRIKES AGAIN!

There I was, doing the rounds of LIDL with a bag full of shopping. Just about to put my shopping on the convenyor when I reached into my pocket for my wallet with my money and bank cards in it.

Yes, I’d had my raincoat on last night, hadn’t I?

I had to dump my bag behind one of the empty tills and nip home for my wallet.

It won’t happen again though. I’ve left €50 in Caliburn and another €50 in the secret pocket in my mobile phone case. But what a silly thing to do!

A strange thing happened this morning. It was 08:20 when I awoke this morning. No alarm. For some reason or other the telephone had stalled at 23:49. And so we didn’t have sucj a good start to the morning anyway.

After doing some stuff on the laptop I went off for my trip around the shops and my unexpected return here. But the old washing machine has now gone to the great laundry in the sky – the dechetterie was open this morning which makes a change. The fridge is there too, along with another pile of cardboard boxes that had accumulated

At the Auchan I did the rest of the shopping. Including some frozen sprouts, frozen mushrooms and frozen peppers. What with the mango sorbet and the loaf of bread the freezer is now full. It’s far too small for what I need and I’ve a good mind to take it back to swap it for a bigger one.

Mind you, I thought that the fridge was far too small too, but I’ve managed to rearrange things around in there and there’s plenty of room in there now. I imagine that once I start to attack the frozen food it will be the same in the freezer there too.

After lunch and a bit of tidying up, I crashed out for half an hour or so, and then I caught up with a few other things that needed doing too.

But this evening US Granvillaise’s 3rd XI were playing ES Hébécrevon on the artificial pitch at the Sports Centre. And as it was a reasonable evening, I dressed up warmly and walked all the way there. It’s about 3.5 kilometres up and down hill, and I reckoned that it would do me no good.

Much to my surprise the Sports Centre was closed up, so there was no buvette. How is this possible? In the Auvergne they wouldn’t even consider having a public event without a buvette, and yet here we are, twice in two days, THis isn’t the France that we know and love, is it?

As for the match itself, Granville were bottom of the league without a win and Hébécrevon were 9th. So I was expecting another defeat. But much to my surprise I saw one of the best matches I’ve seen for quite a while.

Granville were much better than their league position suggested and played some beautiful football. Hébécrevon huffed and puffed but never looked likely to seriously trouble the Granville defence, and the home side scored three of the best goals that I’ve seen for a while.

All three of them breakaways, two of which were solo efforts and the third was a cross from the young lad playing left-wing (who had an excellent game) into the centre to the forward who hit it on the half-volley straight into the corner of the net.

I walked back home wfterwards, stopping for a bag of chips. And nice they were too.

Now I’m off to bed and it’s a lie-in tomorrow with an extra hour in bed. We put the clocks back tomorrow – 1 hour if you live in the real world, 50 years if you live in the UK, 120 years if you voted for Brexit and 250 years if you voted Conservative.

Friday 13th October 2017 – IF EVER I GET …

… my hands on the person who decided that it would be amusing to play his music at full volume at 04:40 this morning, he’ll be drinking soup through a straw for the foreseeable future.

Having a little party in one’s room at 01:30 was rather disturbing, but this was something else completely.

Mind you, it’s taught me a lesson, which is to make sure that all of the windows in my room are closed in future. The noise wasn’t half as bad once I had done that.

And this was all a shame because my room was quite pleasant and I was very comfortable in my bed. I shall look further into this hotel once I return home.

So wide awake, I attacked some stuff on the internet that needed doing. And found some more stuff about my grandmother Ivy Cooper performing in Winnipeg in January 1923. Hard to believe that just 33 months later, she was back in the UK, remarried and giving birth to my mother.

With not having paid for breakfast, I had bought some raisin buns and orange juice from the supermarket while I was out last night, and they made a very agreeable breakfast.

And so all of that was followed by a nice shower and shave (and it really was a nice shower too) and change of clothes, and then I packed everything up to go.

The owner was on duty at the Hotel Midi-Zuid. He apologised for yesterday too and let me put my suitcase in the cupboard as my room wasn’t ready (so what REALLY happened yesterday?)

I wandered off down to the Gare du Midi to buy my ticket to Leuven. And here I made something of a mistake. It was well before 10:00 when I bought them so I had to pay full price.

But it was a nice day anyway so I went early (falling asleep on the train) and sat on the Square outside the railway station, soaking in the sun and also supping a well-earned coffee.

Later on, despite still aching just about everywhere, I decided to walk right across the city to the hospital. It was market day down the main street so I fought my way through the crowds, stopping to admire the fruit and veg stall with its lovely collection of grapes, which were so irresistible.

The Loving Hut wasn’t open yet but nevertheless I blagged my way in to buy some more vegan cheese, seeing as I had forgotten to bring over any from Canada. And the manager gave me a couple of names of mail-order vegan suppliers who might help me out.

And here’s a thing. it’s been a while since we’ve featured an old car in these pages.

I didn’t really have the time or the inclination to do much around the USA. I need to catch up, and here by the merest chance happens to be an old Mini Traveller.

rare enough in the UK these days so I never expected to see one here in Leuven.

But then again, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw a mini van here in Brussels a couple of years ago.

Calling at St Pieter’s Hospital for the usual morning reasons, I continued on my way only to bump into one of my former co_kottiers from the Hostel. He’s now managing the little bistro place that’s attached to the other hostel and he invited me in for a coffee and a chat.

Unfortunately I was obliged to decline, seeing asI had a prior appointment, but I made a note. And then pressed on to the hospital.

We had a new student nurse today, so it was a good job that I knew the routine. And when she told me to “move over to the far side of the bed”, I couldn’t help but reply “that’s the most exciting thing that I’ve had said to me for quite some considerable time”.

The news though isn’t so good. While the protein might be “stable”, whatever he means by that, the blood count not so. That’s dropped from 9.6 last time to 9.2 just now. And he reckons that there’s also a leaky valve in my heart.

None of this is anything that I particularly wanted to hear. Things aren’t sounding quite so good just now, so i’m glad that I took the opportunity to carry out all of the tasks on my “to-do” list when I was able to.

It took the doctor until 17:20 to come to tell me that I could go, and to give me my prescriptions. I have to come back on Thursday 14th December, but to go to a different department, and I don’t like the sound of that.

But now I’m horribly late. I was hoping to be gone from here hours ago. I have to run to the pharmacy to collect the prescriptions and, as usual, they are short of product.

And then run for the bus, which is in no hurry. No chance of going for that coffee now.

Luckily the trains to Brussels are quite regular and I don’t have to wait long. Mevertheless it’s 18:33 when we arrive. I have to run down to the hotel, register (why he wouldn’t let me do that this morning I really don’t know), leave my backpack, and run back to the station. And i’m on the platform southbound with just three minutes to spare.

Since I’vs topped going to see OH Leuven, they have been on an impressive run of form and are up there in 2nd place in the league. On the other hand, AFC Tubize are on a woeful run of form and are well adrift at the foot of the table.

There’s a football match played in each division on a Friday night, and by pure coincidence, tonight is AFC Tubize v OH Leuven. it’s just a handful of stops down the line from here, and I’m at a loose end.

Obviously a home banker then.

But we have a tragedy – i’ll tell you that. They’ve reorganised the times of the trains and the last one back is at 22:12. The 23:12 has been taken off. What that means in real money is that if I don’t want to walk back to Brussels, I’ll miss the last 20 minutes of the game.

But never mind. Grabbing a bag of chips from the fritkot across the road from the station, I set off to the ground.

It’s a modern stadium, but they ran out of money after doing just two sides.

And that’s hardly surprising because it’s another one of those places where they announce the crowd changes to the team.

I have a coffee, chat to a couple of people, and take my seat in the stand.

AFC Tubize aren’t all that bad. In fact they can match OH Leuven in most departments but you can immediately see the problem that they are having. Their centre-forward is ploughing a very lonely furrow up front, with no service and no support.

OH Leuven are on the attack from the kick-off and only a brilliant save from their keeper stops them going 1-0 down in the first 5 minutes.

But they are in front after half an hour with a brilliant glancing header from Casagolda from a free kick.

Tubize equalize in the second half and I start to have this rather uncomfortable feeling. But it can’t be helped – I need to be on my way.

Back at the hotel I find my room, and its quite comfortable too. One of the bigger ones. I learn that OH Leuven went on to win the match but it’s bed-time for me. It’s been a long day and it’s going to be another long one tomorrow.

Sunday 13th August 2017 – I’VE A FEELING …

… that tomorrow morning I’m going to be regretting today!

According to the Fitbit I’ve done … errr … 230% of my day’s activity and walked all of … errr … 17.4 kilometres.

Funnily enough, apart from the aches in the back of my legs (mainly from the cramp attack yesterday) I wasn’t any more tired than I might have been on occasions when I used to walk these kinds of distance on a regular basis.

What this actually means, I really don’t know but I’ll find out tomorrow afternoon at the hospital I suppose.

Despite the early night there was some kind of interruption in the building last night. I’m not sure what it was, but I ended up having to close the window into the communal airspace to keep the noise out.

06:20 when I awoke but badger that for a game of cowboys on a Sunday. I turned over for a short while – 08:20 was much more like it.

After breakfast I had a shower, washed my undies and prettied myself up ready for Alison. And while I was waiting for her I was accosted by some young African girl asking me if I were “Luke”. I explained that I was waiting for someone else but if she didn’t turn up and Luke didn’t turn up, we’d go off together.

She had quite a laugh at that which was good. It pays to be light-hearted, I reckon. And she was quite pretty too.

Ohhh yes – I can still chase after the women – even if I can’t remember why!

We’d arranged to meet at the viewpoint by the side of the Palais de Justice where there are some stunning views over the city.

Of course I had brought the camera with me to take some good photos but unfortunately the weather didn’t want to co-operate.

It wasn’t raining, which was quite lucky, but a horrible clammy, misty morning. and that put paid to the photography session.

We took the lift down into the Marolles and went for a prowl around the flea market. It’s been probably 15 years since I last went and there’s nothing like as much stuff – or as many customers – as there used to be.

And the prices – the days when you could find some absolute bargains seem to be long-gone. For one or two things, I had to go for a lie-down in a darkened room.

Mind you, Alison did find some marvellous coffee tables, and one of them disappeared into the back of her car. And had I had Caliburn with me, a second one would have disappeared too.

Something like a semi-globe with an olde-worlde wooden top cut in half and hinged so that you could use the inside of the globe as a storage space. How I would have loved one for my place!

We had a couple of coffees and went for a good walk around, passing once more by the viewpoint at the Palais de Justice.

By now the mist was starting to lift and the weather was looking better. To such an extent that Alison was obliged to divest herself of her jacket.

And I could take a couple of photos from up here too.

On her way home Alison dropped me off in Ixelles.

I went for a bag of chips at the fritkot and then down to the cemetery to pay my respects to Marianne.

But before I reached her plot I stumbled across this tombstone which I must never have seen before.

You need to be a French-speaker to understand why someone with a small mind like mine would find this rather amusing.

But Marianne’s grave is a little overgrown these days – it looks as if her other visitors have stopped coming. Next time that I pass by I’ll have to bring some gardening tools with me and do some tidying up.

From here, I decided to be brave and to see how far I could make it back to my hotel on foot.

And my route took me down the Avenue Buyl where they are once again modernising the tram layout at the junction with the Boulevard General Jacques.

I’ve no idea why they would be doing all of this work though – it was only a couple of years ago that they totally reorganised this junction so they can’t have worn it out already.

My walk continued down the hill and round the corner to the Abbaye de la Cambre.

regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been here a few times in the past and somewhere around I have a few photos that I’ve taken of it.

But I’ve not taken a photo of it from this angle before so I need to put this right.

There were hordes of people loitering around sunning themselves on the lawn this afternoon because by now the weather was quite nice

And this gave me an opportunity to go for a good wander around at the abbey and look for some spots that might come out really well on camera.

I hadn’t realised just how little I had actually seen of the abbey in the past.

My walk then took me along the side of the “etangs d’Ixelles” – the Ixelles lakes that were formerly park of the River Maelbeek.

This runs through the city from south-west to north-east but was filled in centuries ago. But it’s all very unstable and buildings along its course have been known to teeter and totter.

I lived in one once with Laurence and Roxanne and you could see the cracks appearing.

If you look on any good map of Brussels you can see the course of the river. There is plenty of parkland along its route and occasionally there are lakes.

in Jette, where I lived for many years, there was a huge parkland with all of the lakes that was very pleasant to walk around

In fact I often mused that 500 years ago I could have gone to see Marianne by canoe rather than by bus.

One thing that “foreigners” often say about Belgium is that the Belgians have a weird sense of humour.

My natural response is that the way things are in Belgium you need to have a weird sense of humour to live here, but when you see what the city fathers have done, you can understand why foreigners have this opinion.

It’s not every country where you would deliberately set out to build a set of ruins to liven up your city architecture.

Alison and I had noticed up by the Palais de Justice how they had set up a temporary pie hut and a pile of deckchairs for people to take the sun.

That’s clearly not an isolated incident because here at the Place Flagey we had a similar set-up. And by now we had a really good sun too.

It was turning out to be a nice day after all.

The casual strollers weren’t the only people to take advantage of the deckchairs either.

I hadn’t been there more than two minutes when an impromptu jazz band appeared and started to entertain the crowd.

They weren’t particularly up to much and the drummer was pretty dire but I’m all in favour of live music and I quite enjoyed it for what it was.

It gave me an opportunity to study the architecture too.

I used to have an apartment out on the Boulevard Reyers right next to the champignon – the mushroom-shaped tower that is the headquarters of one of the Belgian broadcasting companies.

Before they moved out there, they were based in this beautifu art-deco building in the Place Flagey. When I came to live here in 1992 the building was derelict and in a very sorry state.

It’s now been restored and they’ve done quite a good job of it. Plenty of trendy cafés on the ground floor and offices above.

Carrying on with my long walk I climbed up to the Avenue Louise – the posh bit of the city and walked all the way down the street towards the city centre.

I ended up back at the viewpoint at the Palais de Justice and by now the weather had cleared sufficiently for me to admire the voew and to try out the telephoto lens.

Of course, you don’t need me to tell you what this load of balls might be, because if anything is symbolic of the city, it has to be the Atomium.

And it does look so much better since they have cleaned it up. At one tile it was looking quite shabby.

That tower there in centre-shot is the tower of the Town Hall of the commune of Molenbeek.

But never mind that for a moment. If you look to the left of it, there on the skyline you’ll see a large block of flats.

it is in fact four large blocks of flats superimposed one in front of another and it’s in one of those where I lived for a very happy 11 years – the legendary “avenue de l’Exposition”

And now, we can’t have a good stroll around the city without bringing some controversy into it, can we?

This is the Mont de Pieté – the Roman Catholic religious charity in the rue St Ghislain that is charged with making loans to less-fortunate members of society who find themselves temporarily financially-embarrassed.

And on the wall is a plaque listing the names of the inhabitants of the local area who were victims of the Nazis in World War II.

As I have said before … “and on many occasions too” – ed …it’s all very well these people who criticise the civilians of the occupied countries for what is perceived to be a lack of resolution against the invaders, but they didn’t ever run this kind of risk.

But wait a minute! What’s this?

Not 50 yards away from the plaque on the wall of the Mont de Pieté are these four plaques embedded into the pavement.

These people are also victims of the “barbarie Nazie” but their names don’t appear on the plaque of the victims who lived in the area.

And not 50 yards the other side are some more plaques set in the pavement of yet more victims, and their names don’t appear on the plaque either.

But a brief examination of the family names and of their ultimate destiny tells you all that you need to know as to why they don’t appear on the plaque.

The Catholic Church isn’t interested in anyone whose religious beliefs don’t equate to theirs and certainly isn’t interested in “sharing the suffering of the afflicted” – and that’s what I call a disgrace.

I made it back to my hotel without once stepping on public transport, and found that i’d run out of water. So that meant a trip to the supermarket in the Gare du Midi.

And later on, I went out for what was probably the worst ever vegan burger that I have ever eaten and I won’t be going there again.

But with it being a really beautiful evening by now, I went for a walk along the boulevard to watch the funfair and to try a little “cut and paste” of images taken in the dark.

This image is well-cropped from the original and the results compare favourably with what the old Nikon D5000 would have produced under similar circumstances.

All in all, I’m not too disappointed

But if you want to see what the camera can do with its video facility, here’s a little film.

Again, this is edited down quite considerably from the original (as, in fact, are all of the photos that I take) and once again, I’ve had much worse results from this with other cameras

All-in-all, I’m quite satisfied with this camera.

So that was my day out then. 2002 words, 17.4 kilometres and the exciting thing about it was that I didn’t crash out either. It clearly did me some good although I’m now walking like John Wayne after a week on his horse.

I’ll regret this tomorrow!

Sunday 30th July 2017 – HOW LONG IS IT …

… since I had a proper Sunday?

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that back in the Good Old Days Sunday was a Day Of Rest. And not only that, but a lie-in too. And there were some Sundays when I didn’t show before midday too.

Those days seemed to be long-gone, didn’t they? Several times just recently I’ve been wide away on a Sunday long before my usual rising time of 07:00.

So what happened today that I was asleep until … errr … 10:13?

And a good sleep too. I was away on my travels too – carrying on from yesterday round here somewhere outside, with with three other people. All of them pseudo-priests, and were in fact three young lads whom I knew when I worked in Brussels.

10:15 in here, breakfast over by 10:45, and then a sit-down for an hour or so. Far too late to go for the baguette at the magasin de presse so I reckoned a quick stroll down the hill.

But what the …! What’s going on here?

Hordes of people clinging to various vantage points looking at what looks like a ship blowing off thousands of gallons of water for some reason or another.

I had to go and check that out. Maybe it was a shipwreck or something (I’d seen a ship on the horizon in the dark last night);

But I didn’t get too far down the hill though.

The Marité might not have been at home (she’s been gone for a few days now) but lots of other people were there on her quayside.

Some kind of military vehicle display I reckon.

So cancel the baguette I nipped down to the fritkot for a bag of chips and threw all of my plans into the air.

Some kind of military vehicle display it was indeed.

Probably about 20 wartime vehicles all told, of all shapes, sizes and descriptions. Tanks, jeeps, lorries and motorcycles, and so I had a good wander around.

Quite a lot of stuff that I would have happily taken home in a heartbeat.

But pride of place anywhere, anyhow and on any occasion has to go to the magnificent Welbike.

Designed to fold to fit into a parachute supply container, these were used by paratroopers and resistance fighters all over Occupied Europe.

A brilliant idea, but the Villiers 98cc two-stroke engine was hopelessly underpowered for the rough terrain and many were abandoned by the paratroopers as an unnecessary encumbrance once the War opened out.

Naturally, this part of France, not too far from the D-Day beaches, would be where you might expect the odd one or two to surface every now and again.

From there I wandered off down the quayside and onto the harbour mole to see if I could see anything that was going on where that ship might have been.

It had cleared off, so it can’t have been a shipwreck, but nevertheless I had a superb view of the Iles de Chausey and so I gave the new zoom lens a run-out.

And the verdict? Not as good as I would have liked, but I’ve had much worse than this. And it IS automatic focus.

But it did occur to me that I’ve not taken a photograph of the port of Granville from this vantage point yet.

I was over there where that black triangle was the other day, and you can see one of the boats that go to the Iles de Chausey in the bay next to it.

To the left of centre are the lock gates for the commercial port. It’s a tidal basin so when the tide is going out they close the gates so that the water stays in and the big ships like Pluto and Victress can stay afloat.

I waled all the way back to here via the Coastal Path. First time that I’d done that.

There’s a good view right back across the port and the town from up here, and you can see the ship repairer’s yard too. They have a novel way of hoisting ships out of the water.

So I carried on back here but couldn’t see anything to suggest what that ship or whatever it was might have been doing.

And had a rest when I arrived. It was a long walk back here – 4.8 kilomtres in fact according to the Fitbit.

Tea was pizza tonight (well, it IS Sunday) and I had a chat with Liz on the internet. Now another walk and an early night. Start again at 07:00 tomorrow.

We have church bells going off and a choir singing in the vicinity tonight.

Tuesday 11th April 2017 – I’VE JUST HAD ….

… the most extraordinary proposition put to me.

And no, Rhys, it’s not like that. And it doesn’t involve sheep either.

I went to see two more ruins this morning. And I was quite right too. One was really beautiful, with a magnificent view out to sea and the price wasabout right too. But it was furnished, and furnished too in the worst possible taste, and it was thoroughly filthy. Not even I as a tenant would leave an apartment in this kind of state. We shan’t talk about the kitchen either.

But it was the other one in the same building that really got me. It was another studio – which was superficially larger. But all of the difference and more was taken up by a totally pointless hall d’entrée and I didn’t understand that at all.

And worse was to come. For it had a balcony, which the one at the top didn’t have, but this was on the first floor and it had a stunning view of the car park and the high hedge that screened it from the view of the sea.

But there was one thing that totally shocked me – and it does take a lot to do that, I’ll tell you. There had been transfers or patches stuck on the wall, and it was impossible to remove them. "Don’t worry" said the estate agent. "The landlord will buy the paint and you can paint over them". At that, I turned on my heels and walked out.

Some, if not all of these landlords whom I have encountered, are living on a totally different planet than I am, and I’m sure that it’s not me who is devoid of reality. I expect a clean and tidy apartment in good order and good repair in a respectable building – that’s a prime consideration. But clearly many of these landlords – and many of the tenants too, I shouldn’t wonder – have totally different ideas than I have. Whatever is the world coming to?

So last night I slept the Sleep of the Dead and it wasn’t until the alarm went off that I staggered to my feet. 10 minutes under the shower soon restored me to life (well, sort-of, anyway) and I was glad that I wasn’t having breakfast because I wasn’t hungry in the least. I headed off instead through the fog and mist and the roadworks (of which there were more than just a few) for my rendezvous with destiny.

The esate agent had a bit of a moan about dropping me of at the railway station but then she can’t pick and choose her clients either.

I had a long wait for my train so I had plenty of time to relax and buy a coffee – but then it was worth the wait because it was a very modern diesel mutiple-unit. A bit lightweight and it rolled around quite a lot, but on the other hand the seats were super-comfortable and there were plenty of power points all over the place.

My neighbours were a young woman and her two kids who were pleying an exciting game of cards all the way to Paris. It certainly kept them amused and out of mischief for a while.

Lunch was the baguette that I had bought last night for this morning’s breakfast, together with the bowl of mint couscous that I had bought from LeClerc on Saturday, washed down with sparkling water that I had brought with me. Very acceptable.

The Paris metro was the usual incomprehensible maze, worsened by the fact that one half of the metro station at Montparnasse is cloed for renovation – and it’s the half that I need. Consequently it’s a bit all round the houses to reach the Gare du Nord.

We had an exciting few minutes of security alert as someone had forgotten their luggage in the waiting room, and then we were all ready to board out train – the one on the right of course.

There’s one of these stupid security checks that you have to pass before boarding the train these days – and that’s the kind of thing that gets on my nerves as you all well-know. But at least I had a comfortable seat on the train and I was quite undisturbed.

Imagine my surprise on arriving at Bruxelles Gare du Midi to discover that there was a train for leuven pulling in right at that moment. That involved something of a sprint but nevertheless I leapt aboard, as did another family who immediately discovered that they had leapt aboard the wrong train.

I was okay though and ended up being decanted in Leuven much earlier than anticipated.

Walking around the ring road towards where I’m staying tonight, I noticed this sign on a wall by a door to a building.

Verbond is “Association”, tuin is “garden”, bouw is “building” and cooperatie is “co-operative”. And so I’m wondering if this building is the headquarters of the Association for people who share garden sheds with other people.

My early arrival gave me time to visit the Colruyt supermarket down the road to stock up with breakfast material, which is good news.

And my trip down the road took me past a fritkot that advertised a terrace, so on the way back I stopped for tea. The terrace is hardly the most exciting terrace in the world as you can see, but it was nice to sit outside and enjoy the fresh air

I’m not staying in my usual hostel but in a flat-hotel place called the Condo Gardens. Here I have my own tiny little studio and although breakfast isn’t included, it’s totally self-sufficient.

And I do hope that the bed is comfy because I’m ready for it.

Monday 6th March 2017 – I PAID …

… for all of this effort over the last few days.

Despite the bad night and waking up at 06:00, I was down for breakfast at 07:00 feeling fairly okay. But coming back I was overwhelmed, as if the exercise was too much, and I had to go and lie down, aching all over and feeling really bad.

Nevertheless I made it down to pick up Hannah but I clearly wasn’t on form. We took the main-line train to the European Parliament where she went off for her guided tour. Being young, Canadian and still a student, she needs to make her CV as impressive and completely different from anyone else’s if she wants to have a good job, and so I pulled a few strings the other week and managed to organise a guided tour around the Parliament.

I wasn’t up to it and so I rode herd on the luggage and read a book.

When she returned, she noticed my distress and decided that we may as well go to the airport then rather than a couple of hours later. And so we walked up to Schuman, I picked up my bank cards, and then leapt on board the Express bus (with a certain amount of confusion about the pricing structure).

Once Hannah had disappeared into the bowels of the airport I headed back for the bus to Leuven. There are two per hour, at … errr … 33 minutes past and … errr … 35 minutes past. How about that for planning? And none of them goes via the hospital.

I ended up at the station and I nipped off to find the Ibis Budget, seeing as how I really was feeling bad. But for some reason or other it was … errr … €74 tonight. Why is that?

Instead, I took a bus up to the hospital, liberated my discharge papers, sorted out my medicines, and then headed for Caliburn. And we hit the road.

I’ve ended up in a B&B near Arlon on the Luxembourg border. It’s cheap but good. There’s no food in the vicinity so I had to drive about 100 miles to find a fritkot.

Now I’m off to bed. I deserve it. I hope that I feel better tomorrow.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: fritkot

Thursday 14th March 2019 – HERE I AM …

Sunday 23rd December 2018 – SO THAT’S ANOTHER .

Friday 12th October 2018 – WHAT WITH ONE …

Wednesday 9th May 2018 – AND SO DESPITE …

Sunday 15th April 2018 – I’M MOVING ON …

Saturday 31st March 2018 – YOU MISSED …

Friday 16th February 2018 – MY NEIGHBOURS …

Friday 15th December 2017 – WHAT AN EXCITING …

Saturday 18th November 2017 – I WAS WELL …

Saturday 28th October 2017 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN STRIKES AGAIN!

Friday 13th October 2017 – IF EVER I GET …

Sunday 13th August 2017 – I’VE A FEELING …

Sunday 30th July 2017 – HOW LONG IS IT …

Tuesday 11th April 2017 – I’VE JUST HAD ….

Monday 6th March 2017 – I PAID …

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